


Harmony in Ultraviolet

by Oriens



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:06:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oriens/pseuds/Oriens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first scrap of a post-Reichenbach fic; heading towards John rebuilding his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harmony in Ultraviolet

The girl behind him has an iPhone. He can tell that without turning around, because when her boyfriend rang her 22 seconds ago, the grating tone hooked at the unprotected spot just above his navel. In a moment, he was in 221C with the shoes and in the café and in the gallery with the child’s sickening fear-drugged voice and there’s nothing to stop him drowning in this tidal wave of memory except the simple fact: dead dead dead. The bus lurches at a traffic light, and he is returned to the shaking present. The little boy across the aisle watches as, for the fourth time in that 15 minute journey, the tired man with kind hands rubs the patch of skin between his eyes and forces a breath through his nose.  
  
At first, it was Harry’s old familiar sofa, smelling of ancient cigarettes and silent companion of a thousand childhood games and teenage sulks. Apparently, he sleeps for about a week. He only remembers about the concept of a funeral when she tosses him the newspaper with a curse one morning. He hasn’t been reading the papers. But there, centre spread, surrounded by the now classic images, is a single grainy photograph. Greg, Molly, Mycroft, two men he doesn’t recognise, and one woman with her arm round Mrs Hudson, who looks old, and so very tired. He feels a slight stir at that. He ought to be feeling guilty about Mrs Hudson, but there doesn’t seem to be very much point. Skimming the print and ignoring Harry’s indignation, he makes a note of the cemetery.  
  
Staying with Harry becomes more and more of an effort. Every time their eyes meet, he can see her sympathy reaching out to him, saying ‘I understand. Talk to me; unburden yourself. I love you. I will not judge.’ It is hateful. He knows she can read his grief in every sigh and every tremble of his surgeon’s fingers, yet still she urges him, silently, to open up, release. Let go. John is not ready to let go, not just yet. Worse, this ‘family crisis’ seems to have catapulted his sister into something resembling sobriety, and as a responsible older brother he can hardly ask her to reverse that course for the sake of companionable drunkenness with him. Even that release is denied him.  
  
When it gets too stifling, he packs up neatly into his duffel bag and leaves. Harry’s at work – he’s planned this – so he leaves her a note and a phone number. Borrowing strength from a whisky, he spends the afternoon in a library otherwise full of pensioners and syphilitic beggars. He retires to a secluded corner (True Crime, he notes with grim satisfaction an hour later) and works his way through every newspaper from the last 10 days. When he finds himself at Greg’s front door that evening, he is almost too angry to breathe.  
  
Greg’s surprise on opening the door is immediately suppressed by his lopsided smile. With a few gestures he makes it clear that John is welcome, welcome for as long as he wants. It’s another sofa, but not the faded chintz he has grown used to: rather, expensive grey leather ‘settee’. Not something a man would buy on his own, Sherlock says at the back of his mind. Imperceptibly, his shoulders tighten, his jaw clenches. Not that voice, the one that bade him goodbye. But now he’s noticed it, he realises that Greg Lestrade is another person who has lost half of himself. The bookshelf is bleak, devoid of photographs or cards. When he gets the milk for tea, he can see that the fridge is full of left-overs. Greg’s still not used to cooking for one.  
  
It is easy, being there. He can even write; it feels cathartic while he does it, sitting at the pristine kitchen table, typing in time with the rain on the windows. On reading it over, he is disgusted by the omissions but too tired to rewrite it. He ends up publishing it anyway. No one will read it, save the scandal-mongers, and he’s given them nothing they didn’t already know. But one time, he’s there when the policeman gets a call. It is late in the evening. They have ordered in a pizza, and the floor around the sofa is littered with the boxes. The rugby is on, but they’re watching it without sound, preferring to provide their own commentary of ‘c’mon’s and ‘what do you think you’re doing?!’s. Then the call comes. Greg is touchingly embarrassed, but of course the policeman is out of the house within 20 seconds. When he has left, John just sits. The light from the TV makes patterns across his face, and he does not stir to turn it off. For the second time in his life, he has been retired from a war zone, and he feels all the old despair and impotence. He moves out the next day.  
  
And then he’s back at the beginning: coffee with Mike in Russell Square Gardens. Mike’s friendship is unfailing, born of being together when they were both young enough to be foolish, and awkward enough to seek out people who would not judge them for their folly. He even gets a bed from Mike, his eldest son’s. The room is stale and cold, and haunted by adolescent incarnations of the boy as he desperately tried to find a person he was comfortable being. John would sympathise, but by now he is just tired, bone-weary from grief and the knowledge that tomorrow, and the next day and the rest of his life will bring no remission from this absence that is as palpable and immovable as a cliff face.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at fic. Any comments most welcome!


End file.
